Vladimir Lenin Quotes
-
I come to the categorical conclusion that precisely at this moment we must give battle to the Black Hundred clergy in the most decisive and merciless manner and crush its resistance with such brutality that it will not forget it for decades to come. The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason, the better.
-
Don't be afraid to admit defeat. Learn from defeat. Do over again more thoroughly, more carefully, and more systematically what you have done badly.
-
The nearer we come to the full military suppression of the bourgeoisie, the more dangerous becomes to us the high flood of petty-bourgeois Anarchism. And the struggle against these elements cannot be waged with propaganda and agitation alone. ... The struggle must also be waged by applying force and compulsion.
-
The goal of socialism is communism.
-
Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations -- all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.
-
Give me your four year olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.
-
Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.
-
It is necessary - secretly and urgently to prepare the terror.
-
Sometimes - history needs a push.
-
People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics.
-
It is at moments of need that one learns who one's friends are. Defeated armies learn their lesson.
-
In capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority.
-
The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow an any cost. To delay action is the same as death.
-
When we say "the state," the state is We, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.
-
Unity must be won, and only the workers, the class-conscious workers themselves can win it - by stubborn and persistent effort.
-
It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.
-
Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes).
-
Only by abolishing private property in land and building cheap and hygienic dwellings can the housing problem be solved.
-
But I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid, nice things, and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.
-
Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.
-
Politics is the most concentrated expression of economics.
-
A party is the vanguard of a class, and its duty is to lead the masses and not merely to reflect the average political level of the masses.
-
Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers.
-
Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labour over capital.